Follow Us!

Cooler Master Nepton 280L Review

Cooler Master Nepton 280L Closer Look:

The Cooler Master COSMOS SE will now make a special guest appearance to showcase the Nepton 280L on top and up front. This is convenient of course, since I recently reviewed the COSMOS SE, so why not put the Nepton and the COSMOS together and see what happens?

I will install the Nepton 280L at the top and in the front. First, we will see how well the Nepton 280L fits up top. There are mounting holes on top for 120mm and 140mm fans, plus some openings for fan cable passage. The top mount on the COSMOS is set up for the radiator to be mounted inside the case and the fans on top. I have the top cover removed to mount the fans. The thumbscrews make short work of the installation. First we install the 140mm fans that come with the Nepton. Next, I installed the 120mm JetFlo fans, and of course there is plenty of room.

Inside there is plenty of room for the radiator. Depending on your motherboard, you may be able to get a second set of fans for a push / pull configuration, but my MSI Z87-GD65 motherboard has some interference with the VRM heatsinks. Mounting the radiator and fans on top is pretty straighforward. But mounting the radiator in front takes a bit more work. To properly use the radiator in front, you must remove all the hard drive cages and support frames. This is fairly easy and only takes a few minutes. The lower hard drive cage only needs to be moved, and we'll see that shortly. There are two special mounting brackets for a front mounted radiator in the COSMOS SE case, and I tried a test fit with just the radiator. No problems so far. Next, I will move the radiator back a little to make room for the fans, which I will install to the front of the radiator.

Here you can see how the upper hard drive cages are absent, but the lower cage is still there and it is separate from the upper cages. The COSMOS SE has mounts for two solid state hard drives that are integrated into the cage frame, so even if you remove the lower hard drive cage for more room, you can still install two SSDs. This would only be important if you choose to mount the radiator in front with four fans in a push / pull configuration. But the way I have it set up, I only need to move the lower hard drive cage and there are mounting holes that allow for two additional mouting positions.

I have the two 140mm fans installed. Again, the thumbscrews make this very easy. The special mounting bracket has holes for both 120mm and 140mm fans. After the fans are installed, I can pop the front fascia back on.

So let's see how the JetFlo fans look up front. As I suspected, plenty of room and they look great! Clearly the COSMOS SE and the Nepton 280L are right at home with each other.